In the next few hours (or minutes), we will have our 250k user signing-up. In our side of the patch (PH), we are getting more contributors as well. However, this comes with price. Very recently, we are seeing more "suspicious edits". As good OSM citizen we "politely" send them messages.

Some of these suspicious edits are then removed as soon as possible.

Just a few hours ago, someone sent me a message that on another mapping project, the user is copying OSM data. We have proven that the data indeed came from OSM. Thankfully, the maintainers quickly discarded these contributions.

As OSM becomes more of a force here in the Philippines, I foresee that we will be getting more of this kind of contributions. We can't monitor everything. We need more tools to monitor this behavior.

@yellowbkpk,
Some way we can easily look and compare whether the source is legitimate. We request contributors to add a source tag, but this is optional. We ask them to upload traces but again, this is optional. It's difficult to determine whether a contribution is legit or not. You have to be very "suspicious" and then turn around and say we respect each and every contribution.